The house is haunted
by f.f. lindy
Summary: Set in season 10. Mulder tries to convince Scully to come home.


A/N: I generally find songfic to be forced and hokey, but when I heard Shakey Greaves _Dearly Departed_ ( watch?v=rmo5u9OjafE) after watching the first episode of the revival I couldn't rest until this was written. I tried my absolute best not to fall into the forced/hokey category, but let me know what you think.

 **The house is haunted**

* * *

Reading over the files for the tenth time that afternoon, Mulder felt himself growing frustrated by the lack of evidence against Goldman. He wanted to understand but he felt like their investigation was going nowhere. He'd start every day with the sense that he was onto something, but by this point in the day, as the sun sunk below the horizon that he couldn't see from his basement office, he always began to lose hope. He looked over his desk at his partner. Her face was tense with concentration and the furrow between her eyes had deepened with years of overuse. "It's late, Scully. I can't be in this office anymore."

Scully looked up from the documents she was annotating, half of a soft smile on her face. "I never thought I'd live to see the day." He rewarded her with a chuckle and a grin as she looked back down at the daunting stack of papers in front of her. "I think I'm going to try to get through a few more of Goldman's patient files before I call it a night, but don't let me stop you."

"You've got to be getting hungry and tired," he coaxed her. "Even I'm starting to lose my patience. You'll work better if you take a break."

"Suddenly you're the authority on listening to internal cues to take a break? I used to have to practically drag you out of the office to eat something, much less rest."

"Yeah, well, you must have rubbed off on me a little. I'm beat and I can't tell you are too." He closed up the documents on his desk. "Why don't we go grab some take out, go back to the house, and worry over it there?"

Forgetting herself for a moment she relaxed and closed the file. She felt ready to go home drink a glass of wine in front of the fire and curl up in bed with him. But as she opened her mouth to agree she realized that wasn't her life anymore. "I don't think that's a good idea, Mulder," she said carefully. "You and I both know that the house is…" she paused to search for the word but didn't know how to finish the thought.

"Haunted?" he quipped.

She shot him an unamused glare.

He stared her down and continued, "And you and I both know that the ghost is me."

She was quiet, stacking papers with feigned intentionality. As she did, he kept his gaze on her, daring her to speak. She didn't.

"Don't you ever miss it?" he asked. "Don't you ever think of coming home?" He hadn't intended to take the discussion here. He'd really just wanted dinner and to take off his tie. But now the words were out.

Her focus remained on the papers on her desk as she continued to act as though they needed to be straightened some more, stacking and restacking the piles neatly. "Go home, Mulder. I'll see you in the morning."

"It's just a house, now, without you. You were what made it home," he said looking a bit distant. He pulled himself back to the moment, "Maybe the ghost isn't me, it's you."

She wanted to tell him that she wasn't having this discussion, not now. But he knew how to push her buttons. He always had. "You always wanted a haunted house," she quipped.

"Was it really that bad, Scully? I know I wasn't perfect. I know sometimes we'd fight. But hate isn't the opposite of love, is it?"

She finally stopped what she was doing a took a deep breath, meeting his eyes. "You're right, Mulder. I didn't leave because we fought. I left because you stopped fighting."

She saw him visibly deflate, his eyes now turned down away from her.

"You wanted the truth," she said, justifying the words that had stung him, "there it is. I could take the yelling. I could take the slamming doors. But, couldn't take it when you stopped trying, when you disappeared into that office and cut yourself off from me, when you stopped acknowledging me all together. It's like you weren't there anymore. I couldn't live that way."

It was his turn to go silent and search for the words. It hurt, but he knew she was right. He'd disappeared inside of himself with depression. He couldn't explain it. He couldn't justify it. "But I'm here now," he finally said, "I'm ready to fight."

"For how long?" she asked, "Until things get hard again? Until they come up with another reason to pull the rug out from under us? Your passion, Mulder, is what makes you who you are. It's what makes us who we are. If you can't find that passion outside of this work how can I trust that we won't end up in the same place in a year?"

"It's not about the work, Scully. You've got to know that the only reason I'm here doing this is to get answers. Answers about the Truth."

She sighed deeply.

"You say you're not a fragile little girl, Scully," he said, anger seeping into his voice, "so I'll say it. I want to know the truth about our son. I have to know the truth about William."

She felt her entire body tense at the mention of his name.

"I spent a year hiding, away from you, away from him, thinking about our future. I would wake up in the morning, alone, and I'd want to die. But then I'd remember that you were both out there, and someday I'd get see you again. I'd teach my son about the universe; I'd leave a legacy. It's all that I wanted to do. It's all that kept me going. I still think about it every single day. I don't want this damn job. I want to know why I didn't get that life."

"You think that I don't?"

"Of course I know that you do. It's why you threw yourself back into medicine. It's why I never said a word about it. But, I reached the point that didn't know how to look at you anymore without talking about him. If I had only been there to protect you both back then, things would be so different. I'd still have him. I'd still have you."

"So why didn't you talk about it? Why didn't you tell me what you were thinking?"

"All I've ever done is make you hurt. I just didn't want to do it anymore."

"No, Mulder, that's not all that you've ever done. I'll admit it's been punctuated with pain, but our life together made me so happy, the passion that you used to pour into me…" She took in a sharp breath and turned her gaze skyward in part to keep tears from slipping from her eyes. "Life without you is safe. I get by. I do my job and I know what the apartment will look like when I get home. But compared to the way it felt to come home to you, those days when you'd surprise me at the door and…" her breath caught again and she felt a shiver run through her. "God I miss you, Mulder. I miss us."

He saw a moment of fire in her eyes and was brought back to those nights when they both felt so alive. For nearly 10 years he'd had her all to himself. He could roll over and kiss her whenever he wanted, tangle himself in the sheets with her and never worry about sunrise. Somewhere along the line he'd begun taking it for granted. "Then why won't you come home?"

"Because I can't watch you slowly kill yourself anymore. I can't watch you sit in that office and refuse to get help. You pushed me away. You ignored me. I can't be in a relationship with your office door knowing that you're in there dying. The darkness will come back, Mulder, and I can't be there when it does." She fell silent and looked down at her desk, feeling like she'd released a weight from her shoulders, but guilty that she'd put it on the man she loved.

"I've been seeing someone," he said sheepishly, not looking at her.

She felt a jolt run through her. It hurt more than she wanted it to. She, after all, had shared a glass of champagne with O'Malley just weeks ago. But still the pain felt fresh, sharp.

"Oh, not like that," he said, reading her body language in his peripheral vision, "a therapist. I've been seeing a therapist," he said, feeling embarrassed to admit it. "We're doing the whole thing, CBT, sleep studies, an SSRI, all of it. I'm trying to get better."

Despite his clarification, she couldn't allow herself to relax. "Why didn't you say something? I could have referred you. I could have helped. I would have…" she couldn't bring herself to finish the thought.

"Would have what? Come home?" he chastised.

She didn't respond but her slumped over body spoke volumes.

"I didn't want you to think that I was just doing this for you. I was mad at you, Dana. I was mad that you left," he admitted.

She nodded clinically, trying to ignore how badly his words stung. "I'm glad to hear that you're getting some help."

He bobbed his head uncomfortably and stood up. He pulled the suit jacket off a chair and swung it on. "Don't stay here all night." He gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder as he walked passed her towards the door, fighting the urge to give her kiss goodbye. Kissing her used to be part of the daily routine, until it wasn't.

She nodded, not refocusing her eyes on her work, but instead looking up at him warmly.

Something in her glance made him say something he hadn't planned to. "If you decide you miss your haunted house, you know where I am."

She gave him a weak smile as he made his way out the door and turned back to her work.

* * *

An hour later she caught herself rubbing the bridge of her nose and thinking of him. She knew, at a cognitive and rational level that she'd left for a reason, that she should not even entertain the idea of going home. But the rest of her didn't agree. She yearned for him, for the comfort of just being near him, of being home. She'd almost forgotten, in her year away, how it felt to be with him. She put her things in her bag and let her car follow the route home as if on its own volition.

She unlocked the gate and, locking it behind herself, drove up the long driveway toward the warm glow of lights and smoke coming from the chimney thickening the chilly January air. She walked up the steps to the back door she'd always entered through, her hand moving instinctually to the knob before she realized that she didn't live here anymore. As she took a deep breath and braced her hand to knock the door swung open in front of her.

Mulder stood before her with a soft smile on his face. He'd changed into a gray t-shirt and sweats, his standard evening wardrobe. "I was starting to think that you weren't going to come. I thought maybe I was too spooky."

She smirked back at him. "I don't scare that easy."

His smile widened and he ushered her in to the house. She saw the comfortable scene, cartons of Chinese take out on the coffee table, a thick wool blanket draped over the back of the couch, a crackling fire on the hearth, an old movie playing muted on the TV. She tried to soak it in. Some things were different, she noticed. He'd replaced a few of the things that she'd taken with her when she left. There was no fresh fruit in the bowl on the counter and likely not a green vegetable in the house. But still, it felt like home.

She slouched out of her coat and suit jacket, toeing off her shoes and feeling the chill of the wood floors on her nylon clad toes. As if no time had passed at all Mulder wandered unceremoniously to the kitchen to get her a plate and pair of chopsticks, then back to the couch to take his seat. She recognized their usual order from their usual take out spot, the things she often picked up on her way home from work at the hospital. "This is a lot of food for one guy," she observed.

"I was hoping I'd have company." He patted the couch beside him on the space they both knew was hers.

She carefully set herself down in her worn spot on the couch and dished herself up the fried rice and kung pao chicken she'd eaten beside him more times than she could count.. Mulder picked back up his chopsticks and resumed eating. They ate in silence, watching the flames dance in the fireplace and ignoring the movie on the TV that they'd both seen before.

Finally, she set down her chopsticks. "It can't be this easy, Mulder. It just isn't."

"Did you want a little more cloak and dagger? Should we have come up with some excuse to meet for just in case someone asked what we were doing together after hours? Or met in secret at some rundown hotel somewhere on the road? Made it feel more like the old days on the run?"

"Mulder, you know that's not what I meant. I can't just pretend that the last year didn't happen and neither can you. We can't just go back to the way it was and ignore what went wrong."

"I'm not asking you to. I'm just asking for a chance to show you that I'm trying."

She paused. "Well, you do seem to be showering more regularly than you were there for a while…" she said, half joking.

"I'm doing well. I'm gainfully employed. I'm driving again. I shaved."

She heard an inkling of innuendo in his tone and had to fight back the butterflies in her stomach. How could he possibly still give her butterflies, she wondered. "Well, in that case you're a step ahead of me."

He raised his eyebrows, surprised that she'd taken the bait. He'd expected to have to work a lot harder for that one.

She nibbled at her rice a bit more, letting herself sit just a little closer to him than she had been. "The house looks nice. I sort of expected squalor."

"I let it get pretty bad for a while after you left," he admitted. "But I've been trying. You know, now that I'm back on the government payroll and they know where I'm living, I'm thinking it might be time to fix the place up a bit."

"Fix it up?"

"Yeah, you know like we used to talk about? Repairing the front porch, getting it a fresh coat of paint. There's no need to keep such a low profile if it's all on the record anyway. It wouldn't hurt do a little maintenance. I'm sort of getting attached to this place."

"Mulder?" she said, worrying, however irrationally, that he wasn't the man he appeared to be.

He smiled, "Don't worry, Scully, it's me, not Eddie VanBlunht or anyone else."

"But a therapist? Cleaning the house? Fixing the porch? You can see why I'd worry."

"Well, my office is still just as messy as ever. But, I like I said, I guess you rubbed off on me more than I thought. You know what they say, clean house, dirty mind."

She gave him a little shove and set down her now nearly empty plate. Mulder followed suit and set his on the coffee table next to hers, then leaned back, further closing the gap between them and casually resting an arm over the back of the couch behind her.

"Are you trying to put the moves on me?" she asked.

"What are my odds if I were?"

"Sex isn't going to fix what's wrong with us, Mulder," she said somberly.

"But it wouldn't hurt," he said. "I promise," he added with a grin.

She craned her neck up tentatively and let him press a kiss to her mouth. She couldn't help but think of how commonplace this had once been. Once, when the depressive episodes were less frequent and severe, when they'd approached something like normalcy and their evenings were spent on this couch in front of this fire together. But now, it felt strange and new again. It felt forbidden as her conscious mind told her this was terrible idea. She knew she should pull away, but instead she shifted her body to deepen the kiss and wrap herself in his embrace, her fingers making their way to his hair.

* * *

He awoke to the sound of his cell phone alarm on the nightstand. He silenced the beeping and rolled over to spoon her bare body against his. "Good morning," she said groggily in response.

"Morning," he half groaned.

She curled into him and pressed a kiss against his bicep because it was the skin she could reach with her lips. It felt like being back where she belonged.

"I missed you in this bed," he said, slowly becoming a bit more awake.

She didn't want to admit how much she had missed him, but felt oddly like she had no where to hide what she was thinking. He knew her too well. She knew that he could intuit her thoughts. He knew that she was thinking about how good this felt, about how she wished that things could be this easy. She wished that they could just erase the 3 years of misery from their relationship and be here. But how would she explain to herself, much less her mother, that she'd just decided to give it another try, knowing full well that Mulder would likely end up back in a fit of depression sooner or later. He'd stop showering and leaving the house and she'd live with his ghost until her fangs came out again.

"I know it's not all solved," he said, proving her right. He could hear her thoughts. "But can't we just enjoy it for now?"

She rolled over and gave him a peck on the cheek before getting out of bed and snagging his bathrobe from his closet to wear as she gathered up her clothes peeking at the clock on what was once her nightstand. "I'm guess going to go to work in the outfit I wore yesterday," she said.

He watched the shape of her body bent over and gathering her garments. "Just like the good old days," he teased.

"Just like the good old days," she murmured as she pulled a towel out of the linen closet and wandered towards the shower.

* * *

 **Dearly Departed**

Shakey Graves

 _You and I both know that the house is haunted_

 _And you and I both know that the ghost is me_

 _You used to catch me in your bed sheets, just rattling your chains_

 _Well back then baby it didn't seem to strange._

 _You used to bite, I used to moan_

 _But now I'm mumbling and you choke_

 _Well I ain't so scary on own_

 _Tell me honey what's a dagger without a cloak_

 _I don't know 'cause_

 _You and I both know that the house is haunted_

 _And you and I both know that the ghost is me_

 _You used to catch me in your bed sheets, just rattling your chains_

 _Well back then baby it didn't seem to strange._

 _In the midnight hour you came alive_

 _I was looking for my crystal ball_

 _I was busy trying to charm that snake_

 _When the sun came up we had no place to hide_

 _And you had to tell your friends that my fangs were fake._

 _I just had to._

 _You and I both know that the house is haunted_

 _And you and I both know that the ghost is me_

 _You used to catch me in your bed sheets, just rattling your chains_

 _Well back then baby it didn't seem to strange._

 _Even when one is dead and gone_

 _It still takes two to make a house a home_

 _Well I'm as lonesome as the catacombs_

 _I hear you call my name but no one's there_

 _Except a feeling in the air._

 _Well, you and I both know that the house is haunted_

 _And you and I both know that the ghost is you_

 _You used to walk around screaming, slamming all them doors._

 _Well I'm all grown up now I don't scare easy no more._


End file.
